Rob Copland

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Friday 30th September 2022

What links the winner of the Comedians' Choice Awards at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, and a well-received 1997 movie starring Sylvester Stallone? Copland! We're not here to talk neo noir crime thrillers though - that's next week - we're here to interrogate Rob Copland, as that show - Mainstream Muck (gimme some of that) - is coming to London. A fair bit of it is about fishing.

So how would Copland haul in an audience, if he was flyering outside?

"MAINSTREAM MUCK (gimme some of that) is my primal scream," he says. "It's my first solo album, it's my hello to the world. I wanted to make a show that was a safe space for me to be able to be myself and be as funny as I know I can be. I hope it's an honest reflection of who I am and what I want to see at a comedy show.

"It's chaos and order dancing with each other, it's my baby and I'm incredibly proud of it and I hope I look back on it and think, 'wow it wasn't even that good,' because I want to keep creating shows that outshadow the last one. The idea of creating a new show in a year scares the shit out of me, but that's often a place for great creative discovery.

"If I was flyering you on the street I'd say, HEY!... if you're bored of stand-up comedy - just normal, good, standard stand-up, paint by numbers comedy as you know it - if you've seen enough of that, then please come to my show, it's fun, I promise."

It is. And how was his Edinburgh experience generally?

"My Edinburgh experience this year was amazing, people always go on about how it makes you insane but life in London makes me insane. I have to navigate so much at home, balancing my relationship with comedy and working as a freelancer to make enough money to pay the bills.

"In Edinburgh life's super simple: you do your show, you work on that, you see amazing shows by the most creative people in the world, you see all your best friends all the time, people give you money for doing what you love, you basically get to live your dream for a month. It's repetitive sure, but fuck me does it beat going to an office job you hate, pasting on a smile to get through the day so you can go do a gig in a room above a pub and hurry home to see your loved one before the day's over...

"Edinburgh is amazing, this was my fourth time doing it and for sure the most relaxed I've felt up there, it always used to feel like a tough away fixture; midweek, November, away at Burnley... but I've been up enough times now and since the pandemic I've been there to do gigs at Monkey Barrel (the best comedy club in the UK) this year and had some really positive experiences there.

"So now it feels like it's a home game, August, Saturday, early kick-off against Aston Villa, Sadio Mane breaks the world record for the fastest hat-trick. Bliss."

Kopland! Now let's head back to his debut show. Or shows.

First gig?

I kind of did stand-up for the first time three times.

The first time I was probably 13 at school, they did this Christmas Show and you could audition to do anything at it. At a summer camp in Scotland an American girl played us all Dane Cook: Harmful If Swallowed (to this day one of my favourite comedy albums), I pretty much fell in love with stand-up that day, 20 or so of us huddled around this discman plugged in to a little speaker shushing people when they spoke, all of us crying with laughter.

I literally just did Dane Cook jokes at this Christmas show in front of the whole school, in an American accent as well! I was this 13 year-old kid from the New Forest doing a Boston American adult's routines - 'The two things guys would rather do than have sex: be part of a bank heist or have a pet monkey' and 'office shooter' - at a school Christmas show?!

It went well, everyone laughed, but they weren't my jokes, so it kinda doesn't count right?

And First Gig two?

The next 'first time' was 'graduating' from The Comedy School classes I did back in 2015, it was hosted by Jeff Innocent at Backyard Comedy and after the show he pointed at me in the smoking area and shouted "There's more in the tank with this one!" And I will never forget that because deep down I was like, I think there is you know! But that gig was a bit of a safe space, friendly audience, who were all told it's new comedians, go easy on them...

And three?

So the first PROPER gig I did was at the Cav! Comedy Virgins! I was so so so sooooo nervous, because I felt like I was embarking on the first steps of my destiny.

When I turned up there was this random dude I went to uni with who I'd only met like three times and he was blind drunk all the times I met him, this was no different. He was pissed as a fart but ended up smashing the roof off it! He did this bit about someone farting in his face on a train, people were dying. He won the trophy and I bombed so, so badly.

The random guy I went to uni with never did stand-up again, it was just a bit of fun to him, but it meant everything to me... probably why I did so bad and he did so well.

Favourite show, ever?

Really early on when I'd just started to figure it out a bit, maybe two years in, I lived near the Aces and Eights, the night Shambles ran there every Thursday, I used to go every week, help set up the room, flyer for an hour before, I just did it because I wanted to, no one asked me to. Eventually Zoe Waterman who ran it gave me a spot (THANKS ZOE!).

When I turned up for the gig Lou Sanders, Glenn Moore and John Kearns were on the bill. I was sat in the green room with these guys and they were gossiping about people getting on to panel shows, their agents, etc etc and I was just sat between them all smiling and nodding along like, 'I am out of my element here, but blend in!'

John is also someone I've always been in awe of and to be on a bill with him was mind-blowing to me at the time. He came up to me after and said I reminded him of Steve Martin, which is one of the nicest lies anyone's ever told me :) I was on cloud nine for about a week after that gig. That sounds so lame, but I don't care! It was such an empowering experience early on and I really treasure that memory.

Worst gig?

This actually happened around the same time, about two years into doing stand-up, when I thought I'd started to figure it out. I got in touch with Ivor Dembina (who took my The Comedy School classes) and said, 'hey I have a fairly decent act now, can I do your Saturday night show at the Camden Comedy Club?'

He gave me a five spot, so I got on at the same club the night before to run my five mins in the room. It went so well - I came on stage and said, 'let's start with a little sing-song shall we?' then started singing the piano intro to 1000 Miles by Vanessa Carlton, a guy in the second row jumped out his seat with excitement and sang along, me doing piano, him singing, the whole crowd joined in, it was great - tomorrow is gonna be easy!

Oh dear...

On Saturday I turn up feeling confident. The gig starts, I'm on last in the second; just before the second half starts in walks Tom Ward, looking cool as fuck, shakes hands with Ivor and goes straight on stage. He did ten minutes of just wall-to-wall comedy armageddon, I honestly don't think I'd ever seen anyone do stand-up comedy that well in the flesh before.

He ends and the crowd are like, Nooo! Moooore! He leaves them wanting more, he's a class act. 'Up next, Rob Copland!' Silence. Up I go in my stupid little tie and cardigan look I was rocking back then. 'Let's start with a little sing-song shall we?' SILENCE.

Cue the worst five minutes of my life to date. They hated me so much, it was tumbleweed quiet and I was not equipped to handle it. I was pulling-at-my-collar levels of not doing well up there. But I still sang the piano parts to 1000 Miles by Vanessa Carlton, pausing for the vocal parts to silence because I just had nothing else. I learnt a lot that night.

Which one person influenced your comedy life most significantly?

At the end of my first Edinburgh (2017, I did a split bill with incredible musical comedian and dear friend Matty Hutson) I went to see Mac Demarco at the Usher Hall with my best mate Rouge (Seat Tennant, it's a nickname, I have it tattooed on my leg). Mac Demarco mucking about on stage was one of the funniest and most inspiring things I've ever seen, he didn't give a hoot, there was so much excitement and giddy joy in the room and he was just there to tease it out like a bullfighter playing with a bull, he was clowning around with the band, he disappeared at one point and the crowd turned in on itself and sang the song for itself....

He made me realise that it's not about the performer, the performer isn't the star of the show, the show is the star of the show, the performer is there to service the show. Anyone who thinks they're a star is an idiot. Something changed in my mind that night; the way I approached comedy after that was really different. I realised the audience don't care about me, they just want me to help them access joy.

I'm not sure we've had a musician as the big influence before...

One of the big inspirations for MAINSTREAM MUCK (gimme some of that) was my love of seeing bands in small venues. I grew up going to watch local bands at The Joiners in Southampton and would see big American bands when they came through. The atmosphere of those shows is a big influence on the way I approached this show, I wanted it to feel like I felt when I was going to see bands there.

Here's some serious lo-res videos that really capture the energy of a sold-out show cira 06/07. Long live The Joiners

Also Tom Ward, when I started he was on the brink of going pro I think. But you could just see in the way he approached it, he seemed like this mythical creature, a buddhist monk in service to comedy, committed, driven, but it was all about the craft, the jokes! Not the hunger to be famous or anything, he loves the art of it and he did the same gigs as me (a billion times better - see the question above) but it showed me you just have to work and be in love with the work.

And who's the most disagreeable person you've come across in the business?

When you're starting out you do these open mic nights run by people who see themselves as kings of the little worlds they've created. And when you're super new to comedy you think these people are the gatekeepers because they create a situation where they look powerful, they book the gig, they host it, they can make or break you at that moment.

I remember one where the host would put up pictures of all the acts on the walls, pictures they have just taken off your social media page, printed out and stuck to the wall so if you didn't show up they'd take your picture and make fun of you in front of everyone, call you an idiot, passing comments on the way you looked.

I was always super nervous at gigs back in the day, so I'd sit out of the way - he used to force me to sit in the front row and then call me a miserable cunt for not laughing and send me to the back, tell me I looked awful because I had black trousers with white socks on. It's like 'mate, I'm anxious as hell, I'm trying to figure out how to do stand-up, I don't know how to act in this environment yet, why are you making this so stressful for me?'

It's like they needed to torture at least one person a night to have fun. Really horrible stuff. Sadly there's people like that in all walks of life, comedy's no exception. But you develop a good sense for them after a while and the best thing to do is just avoid people like that and advise others to do the same.

Is there one routine/gag/bit you loved, that audiences inexplicably didn't?

I did have a bit once that was like: "This guy sat opposite me on the tube the other day and I swear he was in the year above me at school. Not my school, he just had 'year above me in school energy'."

Never got a laugh, I tried it like 10 times. I think I just must have been super baked when I came up with it and thought it was funny and smart but it was probably just a sad reflection of how I see myself compared to others, not as grown up or mature. No joke in there either, just a shit jumble of feelings and words....

You're commissioned to make a Mortimer & Whitehouse-style fishing show - who do you do it with, and how does it work?

It's me and the sketch group Crizards, AKA Will Rowland and Eddy Hare. We go to every service station in the UK ranking them on what they have to offer and the general vibe, think America's Next Top Model but it's not models, it's UK service stations and we're the judges.

Also, we can only survive off food and drink purchased from service stations, we basically have to survive off service stations until we've visited and ranked all of them and decided which service station is the best. We're also travelling in an INSANE Aerosmith 1985 level tour bus and we're tripping off our minds on magic mushrooms the whole time and drinking champagne, we're wearing super bad boy chiller crew shades and being so hilarious / introspective / speaking about life and death and the human experience, whilst playing slot machines in service stations.

The content is pure TV gold, we go from service station to service station until they all blend into one and we have such a banging time on the tour bus cracking jokes, playing Guitar Hero, sleeping in bunk beds. The show is a mad success, Netflix buy the rights and WE GO GLOBAL!!! The rest is history.

Any reviews, heckles or post-gig reactions stick in the mind?

I did a bit once where I read random bits out of Zlatan Ibrahimovic's autobiography, tore the page out after and started eating it. A girl shouted out. "You're going to end up in the London Institute"... But with a perfect blend of disgust and empathy that it really hit my soft underbelly.

That lived in my head RENT FREE between 2018-2020. It was a really bad gig, small sparse audience and it felt like what I was doing was being taken at such face value? It's a comedy show, I'm obviously trying to be funny, I'm not actually mad, but then again, zoom out, you are the one stood in a very well-lit room above a pub, reading and eating pages of Zlatan Ibrahimovic's autobiography in front of strangers.... so she might have had a point.

You have to champion your sanctity through the tough gigs with knowledge there's hope on the horizon.

How do you feel about where your career is at, right now?

Good! I just won an award for my show in Edinburgh which is insane, I'm so happy to know what I'm doing resonates with people and especially fellow comedians, I still got love for the muvka fukin streets.

The only down side in terms of my career is that I've also just had to go back to my normal job, working in TV as a runner / whatever I can get to help me pay the bills while I do stand-up. It can be fun at times but I want to be able to fully focus myself on comedy in the next few years.

But I'm just really grateful to have made a connection with my show this year and I'm feeling really positive about the future (cut to me in 20 years' time as a failed comedian, all bitter and twisted up, I work in TV as a comedy producer and I just produce the blandest shite I can find to spite the comedy world).